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The Shroomverse alien looking over green tropical hills and pastures in Jalisco, Mexico.

SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe subcubensis

Named by Guzmán, 1978

Psilocybin record: reported (one or older reports)

A history of a name and a chemistry record, not an identification guide. No name, picture or description can show that a wild mushroom is safe, and poisonous mushrooms are mistaken for magic mushrooms. If someone may have eaten a wild mushroom, call a poison centre without waiting for symptoms: 1-844-POISON-X in most of Canada, 1-800-463-5060 in Quebec. Call 911 if they’re unconscious, not breathing or having a seizure.

How it was named.

Gastón Guzmán described Psilocybe subcubensis in 1978 in Mycotaxon 7(2): 248, from a Jalisco collection made in 1974. Guzmán 1983 remarks that some chemical reports on P. cubensis may really have been based on this closely related species.

Named
Guzmán, 1978
Type specimen
Jalisco, Mexico (Index Fungorum: holotype ENCB, Galindo, 11 Aug. 1974). (Index Fungorum record, Psilocybe subcubensis; pin = Wikidata coordinates (Q13160))
The pin marks the type locality at the level of detail the record gives: one historical collection, not a range or a place to look. Land outlines: Natural Earth.

The psilocybin record.

Every analysis we could verify, oldest first, including results that found nothing. No amounts are given: they vary between collections and this is not a potency guide.

  1. 1993

    Reported Psilocybin reported (Stijve & de Meijer 1993, Brazil)

    Method: HPLC and TLC (per Bradshaw Table S1). Bradshaw et al. 2022, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 88(24), Table S1 (literature review of Psilocybe chemistry; full text PMC9764976)

  2. 1999

    Reported Psilocybin and psilocin analysed in fruit bodies identified as P. subcubensis (confiscated material, per Bradshaw Table S1)

    Method: ion mobility spectrometry and GC-MS. Keller et al. 1999, Forensic Sci. Int. 99: 93-105 (abstract)

What the record doesn’t show: The specimens analysed were not checked with DNA, and the 1999 material was seized, so its identification is uncertain.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 57 occurrence records under this name, 0 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. Records include unverified observations and old misidentifications, so counts show where people have recorded the name, not where it grows.

See the name on GBIF

Sources

Compiled from the sources above; last checked .

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